titwrench:Bungles: Wait, a bail bond for non-violent squatting that's 25 times the amount than Pistorius got for shooting his girlfriend in the head?

Upsetting rich people and the people with all the money> murdering hot chicks. Duh. Did you think the legal system is here to protect you? Do not fark with the 1%.

Well first we need to ignore that Pistorius is being tried in a different country halfway round, both in latitude and longitude, from Memphis.

But lets imagine that his case was magically transported to Shelby County, TN.

You have a person that was otherwise considered a national hero and an upstanding community member with deep roots who is accused of murder. He recognizes that he is the shooter but that it was an accident and steadfastly claims he will prove so.

You have another person that has had past run ins with law enforcement, files false paperwork to take over property that does not belong to them and has repeatedly stated that she does not recongized the authority of the court, policy or US legal system in general (expect when filing false paperwork of course).

Now keep in mind that bail is prejudicial punishment. The purpose of bail is to ensure you will show up to court when you are supposed to.

So who is a bigger risk to fail to show up to court? The person that says it is a tragic accident and wants to prove it so or the person that does not recognize the authority of the court that is asking for bail?

OK - so let them have their little sovereign fiefdom. Cut off the utilities (let them generate their own), and require a visa whenever they want to cross the border of their sovereign property into the US.

Basically treat the boundary as if it were a national boundary with all of the restrictions at the border.

Of course to PAY for all of this, the visa fees would likely be incredibly expensive... :-)

I'm still of the opinion that we should actually GIVE these people their own little micro-country, and treat it as a "Truman Show"-like reality series. Let them have their Tea Party utopia as long as the rest of us get to watch as a lesson as to why living in a community comes with fundamental costs. Hell, the side betting ALONE could be interesting.

doubled99:Yes, of course the whole "sovereign citizen" thing is a scam, but who cares?Why are so many people so fiercely eager to cheer on banks and govt squashing someone from staying in a house no one is using?

1/10.

But I am bored so: hey, I guess you're ok with people taking your property when you are "not using" it for a while, so post up your address and let people come pick through your stuff.

kudayta:Free Radical: So Sovereign Citizens think they can just steal shiat?

Well, from what I've gathered, they think they can steal shiat and get away with it if they some magical pass phrases in the proper order. To them, their legal sounding arguments have the effect of nullifying commonly accepted authorities (like judges, cops, attorneys, and what not).

They don't seem to grasp that, ultimately, all political authority rests upon the ability and willingness to use violence. Or maybe I'm misreading them and its just a huge bluff on their part. If so, then they aren't catching on that everyone is calling their collective bluff.

I don't agree with you on the violence thing by any means, but in general, it is a case of knowing that legal arguments work without having any clue WHY they work. Several posters have referred to it as cargo-cult law, and that's the best way I've hard of phrasing it. Absent any actual knowledge of how statutes, case law, and precedent function, they basically think they can find any little detail that's "off" and frame it as a legal technicality to get around the law. They post their "discoveries" online, where other sovereign citizens see the revelation, adopt it, and post their own in turn. In so doing, the framework of a philosophy is formed, with each person having a hodgepodge of half-baked notions reinforced by each other. It's actually very similar to the way conspiracy theories develop legs of their own over the internet.

kudayta:They don't seem to grasp that, ultimately, all political authority rests upon the ability and willingness to use violence.

I wonder how many "Sovereign Citizen" types are also Second Amendment fans who hold on to the idea of using guns to rise up against the government one day, or who advocated "Second Amendment Solutions" or held up signs at rallies that said "We came Unarmed, this time" (that is, they advocate political violence in other places, but never think that it could be used against them and they can use the right magical-legal phrases to make the big government bow to their wishes).

This specific derp being in that type is a little unusual, to be sure, but it's not like it couldn't happen.

That said, I always have a special mixture of scorn and pity for "sovereign citizens", they are to the law and government what TimeCube Guy is to physics, Jenny McCarthy and her fellow anti-vaxers are to medicine,Truthers are to history, and Young Earth Creationists are to archaeology.

My favorite rebuttal to their arguments is to ask two questions:1. Where is a "sovereign citizen" who actually won in the long term? Yeah, they can use lawsuits and liens and such to drag things out, but in the end they always get smacked down, HARD, by the system for all kinds of fraud, tax evasion and such. Name one guy who's actually pulled off this scam and had the courts back it up and forced the government to bow to his "sovereignty".

2. If, huge if, this actually worked, why wouldn't more people do it? You think if this worked that lawyers and judges wouldn't use it themselves? Some super-secret backdoor way to ignore any laws you don't like, then why wouldn't lots of people use it, and why did you have to hear about it on some backwater of the internet or buy some guys book or go to his seminar or something. Ever notice that the people trying to get other people to do this have a financial incentive to do so?

Magorn:EWreckedSean: Too bad they are nuts, they really aren't THAT wrong. I mean the basic concept of our government is that a few hundred years ago some guys wearing bad whigs got together and decided how I should live my life and I should be obedient to that why?

because you lived the first part of your life, when you were helpless and unable to fend for yourself as the beneficiary of that system which taught you to read and write and reason, protected the place your live from disaster and human malice and even ensured your primary care givers treated you decently. It's the height of ingratitude to have been the recipent of so much help and then when it's your turn to perpetuate that society and give back say "Fark you I'm a self made man"

Please don't whip this poor old soul, but that shore do sound like ole massa when he say he clothe us and feed us so we gotta do what he say and do his work.

Too bad they are nuts, they really aren't THAT wrong. I mean the basic concept of our government is that a few hundred years ago some guys wearing bad whigs got together and decided how I should live my life and I should be obedient to that why?

chrylis:anfrind: Taxation is not based on a threat of violence. It's based on a social contract: you live in a society that provides certain benefits, and in return you pay taxes to help pay for those benefits.

You're conflating two concepts, political legitimacy and political power. Social-contract theory attempts to explain why some people over in Washington have the moral authority to demand that you cough up what you've earned (as did the idea of the divine right of kings); that's relevant to but clearly separate from the issue that what it means to have political power is that, regardless of whether you're George Washington or Joseph Stalin, you can send guys with guns to make other people do what you do demand.

Exactly my point. I'm not saying that, for example, the federal government doesn't have the power to make things happen; I'm saying that most of what it does lacks moral justification and is simply an arbitrary exercise of power. Any good intentions behind such actions are irrelevant.

Last Man on Earth:You say you didn't consent, but you implicitly did when you accepted the benefits of living in a society.

Wrong. In order for that to be consent, you have to have had alternatives. As the entire surface of the earth has been carved up by "sovereign states" of varying historical backgrounds and claims, I'd love to hear how an individual would go about opting out of the social contract she's born into.

Ned Stark:So you agree that the "social contract" is total bunk and the system is just pay up or well take it from you?

Thomas Hobbes laid his theory out more on compensation than consent, so that ancestors could make contracts that would be binding on their descendants. Of course, once the side with more railroads and factories populist senators some new kind of deal general schemes to regulate interstate commerce executive police actions national security letters armed drones breaches its side of the contract...

Ned Stark:dv-ous: Ned Stark: anfrind: kudayta: Last Man on Earth: kudayta: I'm on my phone right now and can't break down the whole violence argument for you. I suspect though that we largely agree on the foundations of political power, but use different language to describe the same phenomena.

Entirely possible, it's just that that whole line of phrasing has been so co-opted by the "taxation is theft at gunpoint" mentality that I find myself reflexively running away from it. You may well be correct that we frame the same thing in different ways, however.

Yeah good example and I see how my phrasing introduced confusion. Sorry about that.

I don't think taxation is theft, but it is done (ultimately) at gunpoint. Hopefully that clears some things up for you.

Taxation is not based on a threat of violence. It's based on a social contract: you live in a society that provides certain benefits, and in return you pay taxes to help pay for those benefits.

And if you try to opt out they'll throw you in prison and if you don't let them they'll farking shoot you. But uhhh no violence involved right?

You can opt out - just don't earn money.

If you're earning money, chances are pretty good you're using those public accommodations.

Yes, wandering the back alleys and eating from garbage cans wholly excluded from the normal flow of human affairs until you die of scurvy is totes a reasonable escape clause to a contract that you never signed but are somehow a party to. Consent is therefore legitimate.

You can't be in that back alley. You didn't help pay for its construction or maintenance. You're trespassing.

Nobody gives a shiat if you consented to anything or not. You are inside the borders of a sovereign nation, and that sovereign nation and the subdivisions of government within it are providing public goods to you (communication and transportation right of way, local and national defense, etc.) You will help pay for those things as proportionate to your means because we're not going to have any free riders. If you do not wish to be part of this system then go find some unclaimed property (land, sea, another planet, whatever) and go live there instead, because you can't stay here.

Ned Stark:dv-ous: Ned Stark: anfrind: kudayta: Last Man on Earth: kudayta: I'm on my phone right now and can't break down the whole violence argument for you. I suspect though that we largely agree on the foundations of political power, but use different language to describe the same phenomena.

Entirely possible, it's just that that whole line of phrasing has been so co-opted by the "taxation is theft at gunpoint" mentality that I find myself reflexively running away from it. You may well be correct that we frame the same thing in different ways, however.

Yeah good example and I see how my phrasing introduced confusion. Sorry about that.

I don't think taxation is theft, but it is done (ultimately) at gunpoint. Hopefully that clears some things up for you.

Taxation is not based on a threat of violence. It's based on a social contract: you live in a society that provides certain benefits, and in return you pay taxes to help pay for those benefits.

And if you try to opt out they'll throw you in prison and if you don't let them they'll farking shoot you. But uhhh no violence involved right?

You can opt out - just don't earn money.

If you're earning money, chances are pretty good you're using those public accommodations.

Yes, wandering the back alleys and eating from garbage cans wholly excluded from the normal flow of human affairs until you die of scurvy is totes a reasonable escape clause to a contract that you never signed but are somehow a party to. Consent is therefore legitimate.

You can't eat from those garbage cans - that's stealing.

We're sorry you aren't happy with the service agreement that comes with your life. Please return it to any customer care center and you will be refunded the full amount you paid for it.

anfrind:Taxation is not based on a threat of violence. It's based on a social contract: you live in a society that provides certain benefits, and in return you pay taxes to help pay for those benefits.

You're conflating two concepts, political legitimacy and political power. Social-contract theory attempts to explain why some people over in Washington have the moral authority to demand that you cough up what you've earned (as did the idea of the divine right of kings); that's relevant to but clearly separate from the issue that what it means to have political power is that, regardless of whether you're George Washington or Joseph Stalin, you can send guys with guns to make other people do what you do demand.

anfrind:kudayta: Last Man on Earth: kudayta: I'm on my phone right now and can't break down the whole violence argument for you. I suspect though that we largely agree on the foundations of political power, but use different language to describe the same phenomena.

Entirely possible, it's just that that whole line of phrasing has been so co-opted by the "taxation is theft at gunpoint" mentality that I find myself reflexively running away from it. You may well be correct that we frame the same thing in different ways, however.

Yeah good example and I see how my phrasing introduced confusion. Sorry about that.

I don't think taxation is theft, but it is done (ultimately) at gunpoint. Hopefully that clears some things up for you.

Taxation is not based on a threat of violence. It's based on a social contract: you live in a society that provides certain benefits, and in return you pay taxes to help pay for those benefits.

And if you try to opt out they'll throw you in prison and if you don't let them they'll farking shoot you. But uhhh no violence involved right?

Last Man on Earth:kudayta: Free Radical: So Sovereign Citizens think they can just steal shiat?

Well, from what I've gathered, they think they can steal shiat and get away with it if they some magical pass phrases in the proper order. To them, their legal sounding arguments have the effect of nullifying commonly accepted authorities (like judges, cops, attorneys, and what not).

They don't seem to grasp that, ultimately, all political authority rests upon the ability and willingness to use violence. Or maybe I'm misreading them and its just a huge bluff on their part. If so, then they aren't catching on that everyone is calling their collective bluff.

I don't agree with you on the violence thing by any means, but in general, it is a case of knowing that legal arguments work without having any clue WHY they work. Several posters have referred to it as cargo-cult law, and that's the best way I've hard of phrasing it. Absent any actual knowledge of how statutes, case law, and precedent function, they basically think they can find any little detail that's "off" and frame it as a legal technicality to get around the law. They post their "discoveries" online, where other sovereign citizens see the revelation, adopt it, and post their own in turn. In so doing, the framework of a philosophy is formed, with each person having a hodgepodge of half-baked notions reinforced by each other. It's actually very similar to the way conspiracy theories develop legs of their own over the internet.

I think Free Radical hit the nail on the head. The wealthy and powerful politicians (government) certainly do surround themselves with many layers of well paid armed willing goon thugs for protection to make certain their laws and statutes are imposed upon the masses.

It starts right in our tiny towns. Local PD's and local politicians. Typically most people in the political arena are well heeled business people, they are heavily connected to others in town by long term relationships, common interests, business dealings and secret handshake club memberships. These are greedy people who primarily seek self gain to further increase their family wealth.

The higher up you go the worse it gets. The hired guns are more well equipped, their leaders/unions are more corrupt and the wealthy powerful political families are more wealthy, more powerful and more dangerous. They play the game for bigger stakes and good luck to those they perceive are in their way.

We all have read about the unchecked violence across the country unleashed upon the people by law enforcement. it's no just beatings, shootings and killings. It's a long history of the the top insanity with unarmed peaceful protesters being fired upon on college campuses and neighborhoods being burned out with innocent folks left homeless thanks to mentally unbalanced suits and badges using bombs.

As for the Sovereign Citizen types, they have my sympathy. There is lots of misleading information on many websites and those that buy into the dreck pay the price.

Well, from what I've gathered, they think they can steal shiat and get away with it if they some magical pass phrases in the proper order. To them, their legal sounding arguments have the effect of nullifying commonly accepted authorities (like judges, cops, attorneys, and what not).

They don't seem to grasp that, ultimately, all political authority rests upon the ability and willingness to use violence. Or maybe I'm misreading them and its just a huge bluff on their part. If so, then they aren't catching on that everyone is calling their collective bluff.